Grace that is Greater

In a vivid, autobiographical article in Moody Magazine, Charles Colson compares an incident in his past with Augustine’s famous story about stealing pears for the sheer joy of stealing. Colson wrote,

Having been at the center of the biggest political upheaval of this century, I’ve had my sins—real and imagined—spread across front pages around the world, re-enacted in living color on movie and TV screens, and dissected in hundreds of books. As a result, I am often asked which of my Watergate deeds causes me the greatest remorse.

My inevitable reply is, “None. My deepest remorse is for the hidden sins of my heart, which are far worse.” That response tends to puzzle or infuriate the media. But it is an honest answer….The sins for which I feel the greatest contrition are illustrated by an episode from thirty years ago.

I was a new Marine lieutenant, proud and tough. My spit-shined shoes reflected the sun like two mirrors, matched in brilliance only by my polished gold bars. In the midst of Caribbean maneuvers, our battalion had landed on Vieques Island, a tiny satellite of Puerto Rico. Most of the mountainous land was a Navy protectorate used for landing and target practice, but on one end a clan of poverty-stricken souls endured the earsplitting shellings to eke out a living selling cold drinks to invading Marines.

We officers were instructed to buy nothing from these peddlers, who, though strictly forbidden to enter the military reservation, invariably did so. The order was given with a sly smile and wink—no one obeyed it.

The second day in the field, I was leading my platoon of forty grimy, sweating riflemen up and over a craggy ride when I spotted an old man leading a scrawny donkey that nearly collapsed under the load of two huge, ice-filled canvas sacks.

We were panting, and our canteens were getting low, so I immediately routed my men toward the distant figure. When the men saw the elderly man and his loaded beast, they picked up speed, knowing I would blink at orders and permit them to buy cans of cold drinks.

But when we were just a few yards from the grinning old man, I ordered my troops to halt. “Sergeant,” I commanded, “take this man prisoner. He is trespassing on government property.”

The platoon sergeant, a veteran of a dozen or more Vieques landings, stared in disbelief. “Go ahead,” I barked. The sergeant shook his head, swung about, and, with rifle at the ready, marched toward the old man, whose smile suddenly turned to stone.

I then commanded my men to “confiscate the contraband.” Cheering lustily, they did so. While the sergeant tossed cans of chilled fruit juice from the two bulging sacks, the old man squinted at me with doleful eyes. His sacks emptied, we released our “prisoner.” Shoulders hunched, he rode away on his donkey.

Technically, I had observed military law. Yet I had not given a fleeting thought to the fact that those satchels of juice might have represented the old man’s life savings or that my order could mean an entire family might go hungry for months.

Instead, I was smugly satisfied, believing that my men were grateful to me for getting them something cold to drink (which they would have happily purchased) and that I had proven I was tough (though my adversary was defenseless). As for the old man: “Well,” I thought, “he got what he deserved for violating government property.”

Although I quickly forgot the incident, it vividly came to mind years later, after my conversion, as I sat in prison and read from Augustine’s Confessions about stealing pears as a youth from a neighbor’s tree.

Augustine records that late one night he and a group of youngsters went out to “shake down and rob this tree. We took great loads of fruit from it, not for our own eating but rather to throw it to the pigs.” He then berated himself for the depth of sin this revealed: “The fruit I gathered I threw away, devouring in it only iniquity. There was no other reason, but foul was the evil and I loved it.”

Each of us should shudder at the vileness and evil of our own sins, whether they be hidden or known by others. Thank God for His salvation in Christ that contains just what the old songwriter would record—“grace that is greater than all our sin.” Because this is so, the Apostle Paul challenges us with these words.

“But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness….For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification” (Romans 6:17-19).

Jason